People have told me all manner of things...they seem a bit too ready to give me advice, as if I were completely naive. I've done my fair share of stupid things, and I willingly listen to advice from others, but I do not like it when people critique me being myself. The most common criticism I get is that I am too kind for my own good. What is the world coming to when being kind is a bad thing, as if I should be expected to crawl over everyone just to rise one step higher? It does not seem to occur to anybody that I do kind things willingly, not because others expect me to. We were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way.
Well said.<p>A similar idea is that "you can't please everyone." (It's not the same idea, because this one presupposes an aim to please others where there wasn't necessarily one in the article.) This trips up many people, including myself at various points in my life. It can lead to juggling too many friendships, compromising one's values, accepting too many work obligations, feeling one's MVP isn't ready... As a result people may give up or burn out.<p>Accepting that you can't please everyone practically means being comfortable saying "no". Then, like in the article, you have the freedom to "bash on with a smile, being who you want to be" while pleasing some people at the same time.
Awesome as always, Derek is truly a well of wisdom.<p>I was analyzing the psychological reasons behind this by introspection, and I think there's something to do with your brain trying to repel every little thing that is different from you somehow. It's there for a reason, so I guess that was probably useful 50,000 years ago.<p>I've realized that whenever you're trying to convince someone or trying to make them understand you, the way to do it is by showing them that deep deep down, you're not so different after all. I really wish more people would realize this. For instance, when you think about a thief, your mind says "Man, I really hate that guy. I would never do such a thing". But maybe he was just trying to feed his family. And that is something you would do.
OP reminds me of something PG once wrote: <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/swan.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.paulgraham.com/swan.html</a><p><i>The best startup ideas seem at first like bad ideas. I've written about this before: if a good idea were obviously good, someone else would already have done it. So the most successful founders tend to work on ideas that few beside them realize are good. Which is not that far from a description of insanity, till you reach the point where you see results.<p>The first time Peter Thiel spoke at YC he drew a Venn diagram that illustrates the situation perfectly. He drew two intersecting circles, one labelled "seems like a bad idea" and the other "is a good idea." The intersection is the sweet spot for startups.<p>This concept is a simple one and yet seeing it as a Venn diagram is illuminating. It reminds you that there is an intersection—that there are good ideas that seem bad. It also reminds you that the vast majority of ideas that seem bad are bad.</i><p>So there are a lot of ideas that seem good which ARE good but maybe are just hard to execute or extremely competitive (i.e. Google or the iTunes store), there are a lot of ideas that seem bad which ARE bad (e.g. most startups), and there is an intersecting sweet spot in the middle, of good ideas that seem really bad in the beginning (Airbnb, the iPad, etc.). I think that is what Derek is referring to and this Venn diagram approach should hopefully clear up a lot of the "How do I know I'm actually right/wrong then?" confusion in this discussion.
Brings to mind the saying I first heard way back in elementary school - "What's right is not always popular and what's popular is not always right."<p>When you're "right", you become Steve Jobs. When you're actually wrong, you end up being Kim Jong Il:<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bhTFSjzD0Y" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bhTFSjzD0Y</a>
This is great advice.<p>This is a great one liner.<p>The context simply does not point to situations in which the author personally experienced times when someone said he was wrong and how he benefitted from his own experience of determining right and wrong.
"Then every time they say you’re wrong, that’s a sign you’re doing it right."<p>Then again maybe you ARE wrong and you're just not paying attention....<p><a href="http://www.spreeblick.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/05/schoolforthegifted.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.spreeblick.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/05/schoolf...</a>
Since somebody always seems to mention it when an article hits the top of HN with no comments, what <i>is</i> the most upvotes an article has gotten without a comment? Is there a service that tracks things like this?<p>Note: At the time of writing this article has no comments.
By this logic, someone who likes to exercise a lot will have people who tell them them are too athletic. Some people don't like to exercise at all, and others will tell them they are too lazy.<p>You better pick which side you are on so you can shrug off the people laughing at you.<p>This ignores the point that the optimal spot on the spectrum is somewhere in the middle, or left of/right of center depending on the situation. This post ignores the fact that a starving artist should be proud of their ways when someone says they are not focusing on money enough. I prefer critically analyzing the substance of the cretique instead of just sticking to my position, and treating their mockery as always non-constructive.